


supernova

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:18:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren, Mikasa and Armin endure landfill life, the three of them squeezing into whatever spaces they can fit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	supernova

They huddle around Armin’s grandfather these days, crammed into a threadbare tent barely enough to fit two grown men, let alone one aging senior citizen and three children. He coughs a lot, can’t stand the cold the way they can, and even Armin stands stronger than him, this man who smiles at them kindly, and welcomes them back even when he’s laid up in bed. Eren is more grateful for it than he can put into words, him and Mikasa abandoned, and him still reeling from periodic episodes of confusion. He tries not to think of his father if he can help it, because he can’t even feel angry—feels this vast emptiness, holes in his memory where his father was, only remembers how Mikasa had screamed in his face, shaking his limp body where she’d found him inside a wreck of a cabin. Once, twice, many times, she had beat him in the chest, cried all the tears she had refused on the boat, in the line for food, the first night they spent in the refugee camps, frigid and displaced. She had grabbed him fiercely about the middle, crushed him to her, shouted that she had a promise to keep, that they were family, that she wouldn’t let him leave as long as she had that scarf around her neck and that he couldn’t leave either. 

Limp in her arms, he feels warm. 

Warmth is another resource here, to barter and to trade. And that’s what refugee life is like: trading and bartering, sharing sometimes, or stealing. Share a fire, a pot of stew when rations are low (that is to say, all the time), keep cordial with your neighbors because the Military Police are equally out for all of them, keep your head down and your mouth shut, because the farmland monitors will take the opportunity to beat you if they get the chase, Wall Maria scum who are flooding the market with dirt cheap labor and all sorts of filth. 

They watch people die, collapsing from sickness, from infected wounds and repeatedly broken bones, from a lack of good nutrition, or from starvation. Dead bodies pile up, and the people know well the putrid stench of rotting human flesh. There are rumors of desperate, starving, hungry people, who know how to best dispose of a human body. In those times, Eren wonders if humans and titans are so different, but he can’t find it in himself to begrudge them that as he, Armin and Mikasa resort to digging weeds from the forest to eat at night, curling about their empty bellies. 

All of them work in the fields, because they’re young and full of energy still, but everyone knows that it’s pointless. Mikasa’s was a farming family, and she frowns when they take rake to hard, rocky dirt, devoid of any sort of silt or nourishing substance. Everyone knows that nothing will come from the poor excuse for soil. Eren takes to it the worst—as a doctor’s son, his life had been relatively privileged, but he doesn’t complain, grits his teeth against popping blisters and wooden splinters, and knows that even here his mouthiness will get him nothing more than a severe lashing that he might never recover from. They’ve seen it happen, they’ve seen people stand against the supervisors and the jeering Military Police the way Eren wanted to at first, but they get front row seats to the beatings and the teaching of how human bodies too are fragile, that bones and muscle bend and break as easily as trees do, especially ones weakened by the strain. 

When Armin’s grandfather is finally sent off, there is more room in the tent, and Armin’s screams are muffled in Eren’s shoulder, because Eren is always warm. He bites to silence himself, to exorcise himself, or because the violence in him is so abrupt and so overwhelming that he has become reduced and broken down. He has gotten stronger, all of them have, because they can only gain in strength or lay down and let their bellies be gutted. These days, Eren is the one who guards their stories, the one who guards the warmth, whispers folktales split lips and rough hands, cracked and bleeding, bodies stiff and hurting. 

Mikasa’s taken to wearing a cowl and a hood, all of the women have, and some of the men, because wild wolves prowl the edges of the camps, looking for beauties to snatch away. The body count rises, filled by children and missing persons, and the refugee camps grow wilder, grow tougher, and Armin knifes his first man, small and scared, an easy target, but all it takes is the smash of a beer bottle and short slash down. After that, he wears a cowl too, and Eren’s eyes grow sharper, his mouth thinner, when Armin blows into their tent, covered in blood. 

That night, he’s baptized by cold river water, and Eren forces him into the current, holds him there by the shoulders as tears crawl down Armin’s face because he hurts, he hurts. 

“It’s not hard, is it,” Eren says to him, as they wrap him in all the scraps they can find, layers of burlap sack, moth eaten blankets, and Mikasa even throws one of the ends of the scarf around his neck. “Killing someone.”

Armin just sniffles, and his neck is bowed by the way Mikasa runs gentle fingers through his hair, remembering feeling horrified when Eren told him about how he met Mikasa in the middle of a sunny field, flowers swaying all around them. Eren who had cried as he spoke this real-life folk tale, except that he wasn’t a prince, and Mikasa wasn’t a princess, and if they didn’t help themselves who would help them? In that moment, Armin realized that Eren was scared too, was trying to separate out friend from foe, humans from pigs, confused and upset and shattered. They had tucked each other close, like they did now, wild children, abandoned children. 

The closer they crawl to twelve, the hotter Eren burns skin, the crazier his gaze becomes, and the military takes on a different significance. It’s going to be shut down, this refugee camp, supposedly for improvement, but everyone knows it’s just another excuse to sweep the undesirables under the rug. The camp will probably never open again. Mikasa watches him constantly, body rigid and unyielding, because if her body is what people want she’ll polish it to a sharp shine, turn it hard and powerful, make a weapon of herself. And he clings to her as much as he pushes her away. He still tells stories at night, talks about the world outside, but he doesn’t talk about going there as often as he used to, doesn’t even talk about the Scouting Legion. The ration tickets they’re paid with aren’t enough anymore, and Eren’s the one who goes out and digs in the trash piles, who sneaks in the crowds and swipes wallets and pawns trinkets, because he’s not special, he’s plain and unnoticeable, but he’s got big wide eyes and he’s learned how to cry on command, even when he’s all empty of tears. 

He’s caught one day, beaten an inch away from death, and it’s the only time when Mikasa wavers, the only time when she thinks of women and their bodies, and what they stand for, a pretty face, a slender waist, a sweet smile, and she shudders at the thought of being touched, wraps cloth around her fingers, desperately binds her budding chest, and there are times when she shakes and cries because it’s an age-old fear, the girl bound on the wooden cabin floor resurfacing whenever a man eyes her up and down as she works in the fields. She hates how she stinks of fear, but nothing here is safe, and it will be easy to lose her, just a single body, during the move to elsewhere. 

They have nowhere to go. 

Eren looks at her, leaning against his rake and breathing sharply, still injured but still toiling away in the fields because he has no choice. 

“The military,” he rasps, “Armin turns twelve, soon.”

And Mikasa closes her eyes and nods, because it’s no different to risk your life here and there, and Eren is burning, dry and crackling, burning himself to ashes, keeping his wishes silent, muffling his shouts and screams, modulating his voice to narrate fables, folktales and nursery stories instead of curses and insults.  
He speaks of titans for the first time in years, and bears the night in silence, body wracked in cold sweat and wreathed in nightmares, marking the beginning of their training. 

Burn, Mikasa thinks, blinks dry eyes, steeling herself because here she is a body in a its purest form, taking in proper nutrition for the first time in several years, fighting and honing her strength and tactics, and oil on the fire, Eren burns, bright and shining, leads them forward like a star, whispering epic poems and tales of heroes in their ears, and when she watches Armin close his eyes and rest his head against her shoulder, gathering the words close like knives, sharpening them and bringing them to a silver sheen, she knows that all of them are burning, like exploding stars, violent, brilliant and undeniable, winking out with all the force of their short lives.


End file.
